A Kindness Cup (16 page)

He retreats to the knot of watchers and someone—friend?—says, ‘They've sent for the fire boys, Snoggers. The hoses should be here in a minute.'

Helpless he is, standing watching the work of a life-time gobbled in moments. They are all agape with it, and by now there are children in night-wear yelping with festival. Flames throw wild light on the faces of the crowd, and Boyd, illuminated like a saint, prays, ‘Christ, oh, Christ, let them hurry!'

Time crawls in deliberate collusion with the speed of the flames now mounting in spiralling peaks above the shop's eaves. Boyd, who is insane with suspicion, wonders have the firemen been suborned, when suddenly the dray lurches round a bend of the street. When the water starts to pour the crowd gives out its bestial sigh. Of regret? Boyd wonders viciously, for the shop next to his had been starting to catch and the crowd was being denied its bread and circuses with every conquering hiss of water-play. The two hoses are turned against the scarlet heart of it all which burns and slows, burns and slows. It is controlled within minutes, but the hoses have come too late, Boyd knows. Slushing through puddles to his burnt-out front office, he is conscious only of black ash and water, the rubble of twenty-five years accumulating behind his rage and hopelessness. He would weep but for the watchers, and defiantly pushes his coughing way through smoke denser in the outer room, where he can still make out the ruined press and near it the clotted, reeking pile of the next day's issue.

He gives the smouldering heap a kick and sparks and smoke fly out.

‘That's all it would have been, anyway,' he thinks sourly. ‘Sparks and smoke.' A miserable fireworks at that, a fizzer, followed by a lot of political obscurantism.

He walks more slowly through the wreckage back to the front of the office and it is not amusing, not even faintly and hysterically funny, when a renewed blast from the hose hits him with such a wallop he is knocked to the ground.

Through this sour comedy he hears Buckmaster's voice giving directions. ‘Hold it, you fellows,' he is saying kindly. ‘You've hit Boyd. There now, spin it over this way.'

Boyd scrambles to his feet, his clothing a mush, and he walks to the sound of the voice on the edge of the crowd and his eyes catch Buckmaster's and hold them.

‘Administering the sacraments, too,' he says.

‘We should have insisted on going with him,' Dorahy says, addressing himself to the Jenners and Lunt.

Dinner is over and he is standing in the long living-room facing the others who are seated near the window. They are all conscious of the revival of a long-lost warmth that both soothes and disturbs. Gracie has ceased examining young Jenner's wife for flaws, and loves both of them, while Lucy for the second time in their lives takes Lunt's hand and extends the other to Dorahy, embracing him as well. Her anxiety reaches out for the significance of hand-clasps, the touch of eyes.

Lunt says tiredly, ‘Will someone tell me exactly what is going on? I feel you others know.'

Lucy releases his hand and swings in her chair to face him, to disturb his resignation.

‘Only Tom knows,' she says. ‘It's the paper. Tomorrow's. There's an article about you and the trouble at Mandarana.'

Lunt laughs harshly. ‘So long ago!' he cries. ‘He didn't ask me. Didn't ask whether I'd mind.'

‘Should he have?' someone asks.

‘I think so,' Lunt says. ‘I do think so. I haven't come back here to make trouble. Tom talked me into coming back, God knows how. I don't want the mess it's turned out to be.'

Dorahy says pacifically, ‘It's no good going over all that. It's done now and there's nothing we can do about it. It's my fault. Was my suggestion. Blame me if you like.'

‘You've made a lot of trouble,' Lunt agrees. ‘Who's it going to help?'

For the first time in a week Dorahy is stringently honest.

‘It's going to destroy,' he admits. ‘Buckmaster. Sweetman. They'll be exposed for what they are.'

‘Do you think anyone really cares at this stage?' asks the older Jenner. ‘Do you?' He is as persistent as Dorahy.

‘I hope so,' Dorahy replies. ‘Oh, I hope so.'

‘An avenging angel,' Lunt remarks. ‘You're mad, Tom. I mean that. Crazed for a wrong cause.' He frowns. ‘And now Boyd thinks they've got wind of it, eh? Can't any of you realise that I've come back through love, not hate! Love!'

Dorahy's explanation is pithy. Lamp-light makes anything possible with its antiphon and response of flicker and flow. The clear glass mantles give definite truths—which subdue. They sit in silence after his words, listening to the night outside where there is nothing but the noises of insects in the viscous air and the looming authority of trees whose branches reach out and touch the three wide verandas of the house.

Restless, Dorahy walks out to the head of the garden steps that plunge into night-dark with the assurance of a swimmer. Like everything about this house, the steps are firm and resolute. The township is a mile away on the northern road and, examining the sky for portents, Dorahy could swear to orange light. He ponders fire, dismisses and reponders. The glow swells and fades. He goes down into the steady dark of the trees and walks through the scent of cane and frangipani to the road that runs with few curves back to the hub of it all. He can see nothing.

Yet returning to the veranda and looking back into the lighted room he does see something after all.

Gracie Tilburn is seated at the piano and is playing and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne'. Her voice floats like a miracle on the waiting air. Young Jenner is absorbed in her. He might be sixteen again. And in the corner of the window bay Lucy and Lunt are sitting with hands clasped. They look at each other and no words come.

G
RACIE TILBURN
is soggy with tears.

Lonely in her hotel room, unassuaged by the banalities of small talk that have sustained her throughout the week, she gives way to an urge to weep that has been pressing at the back of her heart all day. Once yielded to, its luxury becomes addictive and she weeps for having wept, groping through oceans of regret, a baffled swimmer who has lost track of the life-line. There has been a concert (successful), several women's afternoon teas (tepid), and three private dinners at homes where the male guests were reluctant to flirt under their wives' noses.

She is weeping for Tim Jenner and the loss of him—that is, the loss of the sensitivity of him. She won't credit him with having aged and sees him devoured by family cares—though at the concert she could have sworn that he was regarding her as he had once regarded her while she sang. Blinkered, he is. Like some dray horse that looks neither right nor left, strains on the load, and pulls and pulls and goes forward between worlds of happening without a sideways glance. The fool!

But is she any happier for having glanced sideways too often? She gulps noisily at this thought and hears an unexpected knock on her bedroom door with rage. How terrible she must be looking with the practical ravages of grief all over her person registering a kind of monochrome complaint!

She does quick things to her face and hair before the spotty mirror, straightens skirt and blouse, dabs powder wherever, and re-thinks herself as she opens the door on Boyd, who is standing in an attitude of submission. To what? she wonders.

He is surprised by her puff-ball face, usually so elegantly clad in clichés. Flesh is making its own admissions and he drops his eyes to conceal their first flash of curiosity before inspecting her frankly.

‘Hullo,' he says. ‘I'm lucky to find you.'

‘Home-sick.' She explains her face away. ‘For here and there.'

‘Coming back's the devil, isn't it?' he comments, aware of her lie, and hesitates before he says, ‘Lucy and I won't be able to join you here for dinner this evening after all.' It seems like a blow to her already punched-silly face. ‘I'm sorry,' he says. ‘Lucy sends her love.'

Gracie can feel the moulding of her face gradually return to its normal shape. She puts out both her hands. Words are never enough. Boyd catches them, though he had thought of giving them a miss—and begins to smile at the idea. Friendship is like trapeze artistry for gods of the high wire, he muses: one swings and the other, trusting in the first and in God, wheels over all sorts of abysses of mistrust to be caught firmly by welcoming hands. Or words. He would hate to let her drop, really. She is more vulnerable than ever with the lineal registrations of time upon her face.

‘Never mind!' Gracie cries. ‘How kind of you to call! Would you care to have tea with me on the terrace before you go back?'

He doesn't care to, but he will. He says so. Her eyes widen with pleasure. She had not believed he would. Some piece of male, she thinks thankfully, any piece, in dutiful attendance. She gathers her bag and goes out with him into the hall which is full of gothic gloom, green light and polished cedar. The stair-case is almost baronial. Its curves meet their obliquity, there is a momentary clash and they descend side by side.

Grade's face is fully remoulded. She will be able to be coy soon, and by the time they arrive at the antithesis of all this—wide green front, palms, blue water—she is recovered in full. In white, she thinks with non-sequitur vanity. I'm at my best in white. Women should wear lots of it. Hers, though crumpled from a passionate hurling of herself upon the bed, is frail and lovely. The creases are natural enough. She steers him to a table beyond the others who are having pre-luncheon drinks. Leaves grow over this end of the terrace, broad, green and sharp with light where Boyd seats her absent-mindedly and drags over a cane chair for himself. All the morning he has been supervising the clean-up of the wreckage in his office and is still numb. Dorahy and Lunt proceed endlessly past him, the fiasco of them both.

They amble through pleasantries for ten minutes, Gracie pouring his tea with what she believes to be old-world charm, and they gaze at each other less stiffly above the cups.

‘Tell me, Gracie,' he says, ‘do you remember the affair at Mandarana? I know you were only a girl then, but I thought perhaps you might.'

She is astonished at the change in him during the very utterance. The roly-poly cheeks lose their bluntness. The eyes narrow.

‘Of course. But it is twenty years ago now.'

‘That's what everyone says. Did you know Charlie Lunt at all in those days?'

‘No. Not really. I knew who he was but that's all.'

‘Did you ever hear any talk about what happened to him?'

‘Some. Some. But it's so long ago,' she repeats. ‘It's hard to remember.'

‘What do you think really happened? I'm curious because my life's work here was destroyed last night as a kind of bitter result.' He takes a sip of tea and it too is bitter on his tongue. He has no use for sugar.

‘I only heard what you others heard. What Tim Jenner told me. How they cared for him. That sort of thing.'

‘Did he ever accuse anyone?' Boyd muses aloud.

Gracie shifts her chair into a bigger shade patch. ‘No,' she says. ‘Never. Tim told me he wouldn't talk about it right from the very first.'

Useless, Boyd thinks. Hopeless. Why do I care? Have I caught the itch from Dorahy? Certainly he is mad with anger over last night's disaster and now is beginning to assume the cloak of avenger as well. Is there no end to it?

Take this hotel. Any hotel. Place in it artificial scenes of welcome and farewell. Match the stain of easily wrung tears with the green wall-paint, and the laughter with glimpses of starched table linen, and still you have nothing. The impersonality is truly miraculous and you hate this for ever and all places like it. Against this backdrop Boyd prepares for a plunge.

He enlists Gracie's moral aid. Can he count on her? Does she believe in the essential evil of men like Buckmaster? She nods, only half-willingly, but she nods. Is that all? The nodding head? The acquiescent shoulders? On the last evening of all these false evenings will she plead for Lunt through actions however indirect?

Gracie is accustomed to deviousness of a more polished kind with only herself at stake. She is ignorant of how to act for others.

‘How?' she asks. Boyd tells her. By refusing to sing. By giving reasons.

But the programme has been prepared, she counters. She can't do this. But she can, Boyd insists. Not only can. Must. For Lunt. For Dorahy. For himself.

It's male logic, she thinks. Totally self-involved.

‘You know, I don't really like Tom Dorahy.'

‘You're not doing it for him alone. It's Lunt, Lunt.'

‘But I scarcely know Mr Lunt. And he doesn't want it done for him—twenty years too late.'

‘There's me,' he says. ‘And the Jenners—Tim and his father believe in Lunt and the wrong done him. They were people you loved.'

She is silent. The tea has grown cold and is still undrunk. Her relationship with Tim was once the slowly unfolded rose of her. Now it's the worm in the bud.

‘If I could talk it over with him—Tim, that is.' She hopes and Boyd understands more than he displays.

‘I'll arrange it.'

‘It's too late now,' she replies, meaning something else.

‘It's never too late.'

She comes suddenly to her senses. The gut of her is disturbed, but there is a coherence about this man speaking with her that makes her loves and fears seem paltry. She understands that he is seeking now more than vengeance for last night's blow, that he sees the town as seeded in disaster and brought forth as bitter fruit.

‘Forgive me,' she says with honesty this one time at least, coyness put away and the trumpery of it. ‘I'm thinking too much of me. I'll do whatever you wish.'

Boyd leans across the table and takes her hand. The table rocks and tea slops in both saucers. It is comic at this moment. Boyd is fat, shapeless and unheroic to look at. His virtue is in his voice or his smile. He gives her both.